


heartstrings

by drewgon



Series: connection [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man - All Media Types, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Post-Spider-Man: Homecoming, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sharing Clothes, Standardized Tests, except not really because then i have less of an excuse to keep making him sad oops, peter 'communication issues' parker does what he does worst, this motherfucker needs to confide in someone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-26
Updated: 2017-07-26
Packaged: 2018-12-06 15:01:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11603052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drewgon/pseuds/drewgon
Summary: Peter is good at a lot of things. Honesty, emotions, asking for help -- none of those make the list.(Alternatively: three weirdos hang out in the morning before SATs.)





	heartstrings

“Where the hell do you think you’re going?”

Peter freezes in his tracks, one hand on the doorknob, and slowly turns his head to face Aunt May. Her arms are crossed, and -- oh God, she’s giving him _the look._

“Uh, last minute study session with Ned?” He gestures to the backpack slung over his shoulder. Aunt May rolls her eyes and reaches for the bag. Peter jumps back, but not before she can grab a protruding bit of fabric and yank it out. She holds up the Spider-Man mask between two fingers like it proves a point.

“I don’t think so.”

“But--”

“ _No._ Peter Benjamin Parker, it is ten o’clock at night. I will not have you roaming the streets bringing criminals to justice _the night before your SATs._ ” 

Peter sighs. It’s not that he wants to go look for fights (actually, he would prefer _not_ to). No, he just needs to be outside, to get rid of some of the pressure that builds up in his chest every time he looks at the thin walls of the apartment. He needs to breathe, and he can’t do that in here. But he isn’t getting out now.

“Yes, Aunt May.”

“Besides, the pizza got here a few minutes ago. C’mon, let’s eat! You’ve got a big day tomorrow, and you’re not going to bed until there’s at least three slices in there,” she says, poking Peter’s stomach.

They settle into the couch, pizza box resting on their laps. Aunt May hands him a slice.

“Look, it has spinach on it. That’s a brain food. It’s the perfect pre-SAT healthy dinner.”

He laughs, biting into his pizza and tasting cement dust and dirty water and bile and blood. He almost throws up right there, but manages to fight it back, disguises it as having laughed too hard. _He shouldn’t be like this._ It’s been well over a year since it happened -- he shouldn’t be this afraid anymore, but he can’t help it. 

Aunt May looks so happy, with her arm around him and fingers idly twisting in his hair. She turns on the TV, checks out a few channels before deciding on some old action movie already well underway. Peter hopes she doesn’t notice the way he flinches with each gunshot, the way his breaths grow quicker and shallower with every explosion that fills the screen with loose rubble and shrapnel. 

She’s sitting right there, she’s _so close,_ and she has no idea what he’s going through.

(Lots of stories have a moral. Peter hasn’t figured out if this is one of them yet, but if it is then it’s being weirdly passive-aggressive about it. Just his luck, he supposes.)

He spends the rest of the movie staring at his hands.

******

Peter doesn’t sleep well that night. When a nightmare wakes him up drenched in sweat and tears at 2:37 AM, he stops trying. 

He takes a shower. Fifteen minutes later, he pulls on warm black leggings and wraps himself in a too-big hoodie -- touristy, but comfortable; it’s from Acadia National Park, kidnapped from MJ less than two weeks after her vacation ended. The feel of it on his skin is calming, and the dull grey color is easy to look at when everything else is too bright.

Another five minutes later, he’s on the roof of the apartment building, staring at the city below. He stays there for a few hours, until he hears his alarm clock go off several floors down. After a few deep breaths, he goes back inside.

******

Peter has to do some serious shoving to make his way through the cafeteria in the morning. Maybe he shouldn't have pushed as much as he did -- the whole school still thinks he's a noodle-armed late bloomer with a total of zero physically-oriented hobbies -- and he had, admittedly, been very forceful. But he's too stressed to really care about that, and he wants to have some time with Ned and MJ today before testing starts. 

The room is packed full of students who look about ready to keel over from the combination of nerves and having to be at school before the sun has even begun to rise, and Peter understands why their school has multiple lunch periods now -- he can hardly find room to breathe. Keeping his head down, he wraps the soft fabric of his hoodie tighter around himself, and presses on.

When he finally makes it to the back of the cafeteria, the sight brightens his mood immediately. Sitting next to each other, a lightsaber-patterned scarf enveloping the both of them, are his two best friends. Spread out before them is what would easily add up to a hundred bucks worth of coffee and baked goods.

"What's up, loser?" It's not a question, more just MJ's way of greeting him now. He drops his backpack and sits down next to her.

"Dude, why do you have all this?"

"My brother wanted to treat me and my friends before our first SAT. Normally I wouldn't let him, but caffeine is a must, so he took me to that new place around the corner. There are six lattes, we've got peppermint, hazelnut, raspberry, vanilla, mocha, and cinnamon." Peter stares at her, incredulous, as she pushes a coffee cup towards him. Vanilla. "Neither of us liked that one, so you can take it. Ned called dibs on the peppermint and I have hazelnut, so we'd have to share. The other ones belong to the collective. Oh, and take however many pastries you want. I got extra because you eat like a pig."

"I think I love you." MJ squints at him. "Guys," he quickly amends. "You guys. I- I love you guys. You're great. Really."

MJ shoots him a thumbs-up and Ned slides the peppermint latte into his free hand. He doesn't really like it, but it's alright. 

They spend most of the remaining half hour before the test in companionable silence, Peter and MJ taking turns sipping from the hazelnut latte. She sits with her crossed legs propped up on his lap, leaning back on Ned's shoulder as he naps, with her nose buried in an autobiography about some famous author Peter is sure he would recognize if he bothered to think about it.

She's wearing Peter's shoes. And his socks. He can tell because the shoes are one of his older pairs of clear boots (their age being the only reason she had been allowed to take them at all). The socks, meanwhile, are a pair he had made himself shortly after becoming Spider-Man. They're a nice shade of cornflower blue -- not the yarn he had expected to use but the one he ended up liking the best -- and patterned with small black spiders. 

He remembers letting her borrow them when her own shoes and socks were ruined after she fell into a disgusting puddle in the middle of the night. The three of them had been walking to his house after seeing some local band he can't remember the name of perform at a 24-hour cafe. He also remembers the way she had casually admitted to losing both items when they saw each other a few days later, and how she wore them to school the day after that as if daring him to question it.

Peter shoves a scone into his mouth to mask his smile, and hopes MJ won't notice the growing redness of his cheeks. When he regains enough composure, he takes a drink to wash down the pastry.

The dregs of his coffee catch in his throat as he finishes the last of it, and suddenly it's the remnants of a destroyed building mixing with the blood in his mouth. Peter feels his ribs tightening around his lungs in that way that makes it so he can't quite get enough air, and pulls the hood and sleeves of MJ's -- now his -- jacket out to cover as much of himself as possible.

"Hey, is something wrong?" MJ slides her feet off of his legs and rests a hand on his back. Torn between conflicting instincts (one which says to flinch back and another which says to lean into her touch), Peter doesn't move.

"No. I mean- I mean, _yes,_ but I can't--" And MJ's arm is around his shoulders now, and he's leaning his face into the crook of her neck as he fights to control his erratic breathing. She doesn't say anything. Peter has never been so grateful for someone else's silence in his life. His face is buried into the scarf, and he breathes in through his nose, letting the familiar scents ground him.

He pulls away slowly after several minutes, proud of himself for having been able to return to a state of relative calm without any tears, and MJ gives him a sympathetic nod.

"Pre-SAT jitters, huh?"

He had almost forgotten that MJ doesn't know.

Not that anyone else knows about the more extreme things he's gone through, but she doesn't know about Spider-Man at all yet. He wants to tell her -- he wants to tell her _everything_ about being Spider-Man, he realizes, including the parts that not even Ned knows: about the way he can't look at the walls of a building without seeing them crumble, can't look at the sky without seeing giant metal talons stabbing into his chest, can't sleep until he's been awake for so long not even the nightmares can shake him from it. For some reason, he feels like nobody could understand this better than MJ would. 

But they only have five minutes before they're sent to separate testing rooms and he won't see her for hours, maybe a few days after that. There's no time to explain everything he's wanted to say to her for so long. So, he doesn't.

"Something like that," he answers instead, rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly so he doesn't have to look her in the eye. When he angles his head down his glasses almost fall off -- he forgot he had been wearing them.

"It's cool, we've all been there. You're gonna do great, though. You're like, the smartest person I know."

"You know, like, three people."

"Yeah, don't tell Ned I said that." MJ smirks and turns to face forward in her seat.

"Don't tell Ned what?" asks Ned, rubbing his eyes.

"How much better you look in that beanie than she ever did." That earns Peter a punch in the shoulder from MJ as she passes by with an armful of coffee cups to throw away, but Ned is _beaming_ now, and that makes Peter smile too. _Worth it._

"Hey! You were sworn to secrecy, shithead. Throw away the empty pastry bags, unless you feel like eating those, too."

"I'm a growing boy, _Mom,_ " Peter shoots back, sticking out his tongue. She yanks lightly at his hair.

"Sure, whatever. Come on, people are lining up to get to the rooms. Don't wanna be the last ones."

They walk together, MJ's arms slung casually around Peter and Ned's shoulders. As they part ways to find their rooms, Peter feels MJ squeeze his hand. He looks up at her.

"You'll do fine."

"Thanks. Um... yeah, just. Thanks."

"No problem. See you on the other side." She walks backwards, giving him a two finger salute, and then leaves. Peter takes a deep breath and then steps into the room.

**Author's Note:**

> i was up until roughly 6am reading peter parker fashion headcanons on tumblr which made me feel like writing, so thanks to @captainkirkk for those (if you're reading this hi please don't hate me)!! also i realized neither of my previous fics included ned or MJ outside of brief references and i needed to rectify that.
> 
> i don't have as much to say about this fic, just that i wrote it quickly for fun (re: instead of finishing my summer reading book oops). felt like i needed to post something a little bit more lighthearted seeing as how i wrote two fics back to back that saw peter physically injured and near death lmao. that being said when i was editing this it became way more angsty than i intended so, sorry about that.
> 
> my tumblr is @kirishimadhd, so feel free to send me asks or IMs about fic (it's pretty new so i haven't posted much yet but still)!!
> 
> UPDATE: the fabulous @baomien doodled [a thing based on this](http://baomien.tumblr.com/post/164088142929/a-very-rushed-cool-down-doodle-for) that's really adorable and made me v happy so take a look at that!!


End file.
